Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 2 (Stockdale).djvu/297

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May.]
OF LA PEROUSE.
245

a few hours in visiting a charming grove of trees, situated on the other side of the mountain, at a small distance from the place where we had passed the night. I there observed a great quantity of plants, which I had not yet found in any of the excursions I had made in this island. They belonged chiefly to the class of the silver tree and the trumpet flower.

I will here give a description of one of the finest shrubs which grows on these heights. It forms a genus which I call antholoma, and which ought to be placed amongst the species of the plaqueminiers.

The calyx, composed of from two to four leaves of an oval form, often falls off when the flower blows.

The corolla is of one piece in the form of a cup, and irregularly indented on the edges.

The stamina are numerous (about an hundred), and attached to a fleshy receptacle.

The ovarium is of a pyramidal form, quadrangular, slightly sunk into the receptacle, and surmounted by a style terminated by a pointed stigma.

The fruit has four cells filled with a great number of seeds; it was not yet ripe, but I think it becomes a capsule.

I have distinguished a shrub by the name ofantholoma